None of these games are truly difficult.... but I agree with PC Gamer's Review a little

[Yuga-Suggah]

Ok, I know how divisive the PC game review is, with the quote "ADHD brain" being the problem quote. Taken at face value, it is a little strange that the problem is "there are so many good games that it devalues all of the games." It like saying a deck a cards can play thousands of games, but because I don't like Solitaire, it gets an 8/10.

I am going to hazard, that it takes roughly one continuous hour to get an understanding of the mechanics for a UFO 50 game. And then maybe another hour to understand maybe some more advanced stuff, which usually beats the quick games, and gets you started on the epic ones. And when I mean continuous, I mean you sit down and you promise yourself to play at least one hour, trying to figure how to play. No guides, no manuals, no tv in the background, no forums, no friends to help you. I swear, give each game 2 hours if not 1, don't complain, just learn. I swear to you, most will click.

This is a hard ask because this kind of studing does not happen in a vaccum. Focusing on one point for exactly an hour is like studying. And everyone SUCKS at studying. The people who do it well have a trick that works for them and not always you. You have to put yourself in the mindset to do it. And sometimes it feels so much better to have somebody else just tell you what to do so that you don't have to get into that study mode.

My wife plays this game a lot, its why I have so many hours of gameplay. We agree that we buy games together so that I can stop buying so much, and she can learn about the hobby I love so much. But she plays games differently. Night Manor was her first game, used guides, lol forced me to read guides for her. And she had a great time, and I wish I had my lack of knowledge about the game back lol.

But for her, it's not fun learning how to play solo. For me, it is. My job is to read through data, all the time. Non-stop and I will probably die in front of a screen reading a survey. Learning the point, the value of the story, the way to play on my own, is how I want to live.

But good lord is it distracting when you have 50 good games to learn. I just nailed a 3 minute cherry on Velgress. I must have spent 15 hours to get there. Because I wanted to cherry this game, or that game, or maybe give this game a chance. Or play with my wife, or panic over Barbuta, then get cherry the next day.

My point is I think that this collection does a great job at catering to both kinds of tastes and it is a benefit and determent. It caters to the people who want to learn games on their own(but its sooo tempeting to just say f it and play another) or people who don't want to learn solo and watch other people play it or talk about it (but sometimes the learning curve is so high that it dis-encourages you to look for a guide.)

[Nick]

holy ♥♥♥♥ essaying about unable to play a single game at once.

[Yuga-Suggah]

Originally posted by Nick:

holy ♥♥♥♥ essaying about unable to play a single game at once.

Lol i mean its somewhat the truth. It took me awhile to cherry games. ♥♥♥♥ is hard when you got 50 great games that you want to try all of them. It's like having 10 full games released at once, you buy all them, never finishing one of them.

Not that hard to relate too.

[catsgomeow]

Personally ive found it extremely easy to just go from game to game linearly and cherry them, I have done a little jumping around in the timeline at this point but still always cherry whatever I pick. I'm interested to know what you consider a "truly difficult" game to be, unless you're coming at this from the stance that no game is actually "hard" then this seems like a bit of an absurd statement.

[Yuga-Suggah]

Originally posted by catsgomeow:

Personally ive found it extremely easy to just go from game to game linearly and cherry them, I have done a little jumping around in the timeline at this point but still always cherry whatever I pick. I'm interested to know what you consider a "truly difficult" game to be, unless you're coming at this from the stance that no game is actually "hard" then this seems like a bit of an absurd statement.

So let me try to get my statement clear, because I agree with you, saying something like Star Waspir is anything but difficult at least at the first hour of play is objectively wrong. :)

Joking aside, I think no game is hard comes from a place where "I am so good at games that I don't learn from them." I do think this belief is wrong, because I do think gaming is a means to learn and grow from learned information.(Weather or not that learning is useful to anything but gaming is.... lol subjective)

I think when I mean "truly difficult" comes from a place of, "I know how the game works, I have worked on the strategy, but I can't seem to do the strategy." Chess fits this definition for me. I know how the pieces work, I know some of strategy, I can't cram all of it in my head, and I keep losing to people who do.

Video Gaming is a bit harder for me to define as truly difficult because I think the goal of games, especially single player, is for you to learn them on your own, and its not very fun for something to beat me and I don't know where to start to learn. Or more annoying, I can't physically learn how to play this.

A lot of extremely high dexterity games are that way for me(which I don't think this collection truly has, none of them close to rhythm heaven), much MUCH worse now because of my recovering arm. I think grand strategy games like I guess the Anno series fits that bill for me. I think stuff like La Mulana is rough too because of how much the game doesn't help you.

But in terms of truly difficult, I think my definition falls on how strictly the game wants you to do an action, how little flexibility there is to learn it, and how much time it takes to integrate that skillet to a translatable victory.(ie I won, or I lost, but I know how to win next time, or I know how to learn to learn to win) Valgress is very flexable and tells you how to win almost within a minute of game play. You can easily beat the game without more double jumps, guns, or lightening bolts. Mortol is game about correctly sacrificing once you know how to play it. Overbold, you should be able to beat it with sub 5 if you are great at it. Regardless of weapons. Star Waspier and Carmel Carmel are easy, lol once you actually know to move in this and that direction.

Going to be blunt, but I think glorifying how hard Fist Hell is not fair. The mechanics are pretty easy to learn and getting cherry is not that difficult to get. But it took me awhile to get to that point. The game pretty much mechanically told me what I was doing wrong. I learned what I was doing wrong, I changed my strats, I cherried.

Onion Driver... I can't honestly say because I am terrible at that game, and I feel like the only way to win that is to do excellent in the first 5 days, and then just hope for the best. Combatants, I think the fun is when you do what it wants. Paint Cruise, I think the 27 levels isn't fair.

But I think all of these game have a visible path forward to finding a path to success that is logical and actionable, within a reasonable amount of playtime. I think there are some games out there, more in the board gaming space, but also sometimes in the overall gaming spaces where, this is nothing I can do, but fail fail fail fail fail fail fail, and never learn anything about it because my brain cant cram any more information on how to win.

I hope that answers your question.

[catsgomeow]

Originally posted by Yuga-Suggah:

Originally posted by catsgomeow:

Personally ive found it extremely easy to just go from game to game linearly and cherry them, I have done a little jumping around in the timeline at this point but still always cherry whatever I pick. I'm interested to know what you consider a "truly difficult" game to be, unless you're coming at this from the stance that no game is actually "hard" then this seems like a bit of an absurd statement.

So let me try to get my statement clear, because I agree with you, saying something like Star Waspir is anything but difficult at least at the first hour of play is objectively wrong. :)

Joking aside, I think no game is hard comes from a place where "I am so good at games that I don't learn from them." I do think this belief is wrong, because I do think gaming is a means to learn and grow from learned information.(Weather or not that learning is useful to anything but gaming is.... lol subjective)

I think when I mean "truly difficult" comes from a place of, "I know how the game works, I have worked on the strategy, but I can't seem to do the strategy." Chess fits this definition for me. I know how the pieces work, I know some of strategy, I can't cram all of it in my head, and I keep losing to people who do.

Video Gaming is a bit harder for me to define as truly difficult because I think the goal of games, especially single player, is for you to learn them on your own, and its not very fun for something to beat me and I don't know where to start to learn. Or more annoying, I can't physically learn how to play this.

A lot of extremely high dexterity games are that way for me(which I don't think this collection truly has, none of them close to rhythm heaven), much MUCH worse now because of my recovering arm. I think grand strategy games like I guess the Anno series fits that bill for me. I think stuff like La Mulana is rough too because of how much the game doesn't help you.

But in terms of truly difficult, I think my definition falls on how strictly the game wants you to do an action, how little flexibility there is to learn it, and how much time it takes to integrate that skillet to a translatable victory.(ie I won, or I lost, but I know how to win next time, or I know how to learn to learn to win) Valgress is very flexable and tells you how to win almost within a minute of game play. You can easily beat the game without more double jumps, guns, or lightening bolts. Mortol is game about correctly sacrificing once you know how to play it. Overbold, you should be able to beat it with sub 5 if you are great at it. Regardless of weapons. Star Waspier and Carmel Carmel are easy, lol once you actually know to move in this and that direction.

Going to be blunt, but I think glorifying how hard Fist Hell is not fair. The mechanics are pretty easy to learn and getting cherry is not that difficult to get. But it took me awhile to get to that point. The game pretty much mechanically told me what I was doing wrong. I learned what I was doing wrong, I changed my strats, I cherried.

Onion Driver... I can't honestly say because I am terrible at that game, and I feel like the only way to win that is to do excellent in the first 5 days, and then just hope for the best. Combatants, I think the fun is when you do what it wants. Paint Cruise, I think the 27 levels isn't fair.

But I think all of these game have a visible path forward to finding a path to success that is logical and actionable, within a reasonable amount of playtime. I think there are some games out there, more in the board gaming space, but also sometimes in the overall gaming spaces where, this is nothing I can do, but fail fail fail fail fail fail fail, and never learn anything about it because my brain cant cram any more information on how to win.

I hope that answers your question.

What are your thoughts on games like The Binding of Isaac or Dwarf Fortress that have an extremely high information barrier but are actually quite easy once you figure them out no matter how long, difficult, or even impossible getting there entirely on your own may be? By your definition of difficulty I can see why you don't consider any game on this collection to actually be hard. Most of them give the player a pretty wide margin of error and plenty of ways to make things easier on themselves, none of them take long to learn or have particularly obscure required mechanics.

For me game difficulty is more about periods of highly concentrated play, if I have to maintain a certain level of proficiency the longer that goes on for and the more exact I have to be the harder it is. This even applies to puzzle games, charting out different possibilities in my head trying and eliminating solutions all while keeping track of and trying to find new ways to use varying intersecting mechanics feels the same to me. As you said it took you 15 hours to get a three minute cherry in Velgress sure the game isn't difficult to figure out and is extremely short but actually maintaining the concentration and dexterity required to pull that off took 15 hours of attempts. Velgress is like a 5 minute game that takes most people a few hours to beat, think of a boss fight or level in any other game with a ratio like that and people are probably calling it hard.

[Yuga-Suggah]

Originally posted by catsgomeow:

"Long quote from me, going to ignore that"
The Binding of Isaac or Dwarf Fortress.

I am not disrespecting you, I just don't like long quotes because I get lost in them. BoI and Dwarf are tough TOUGH games to answer. And I am going to assume somewhat you have looked at my game time for both games. One of which is really stupidly high lol and one of which looks like I got in a bundle and I forgot to get good at it.

BoI is... *frowns to self* an excellent history of where rougelites were and what they have become. I love BoI, my wife and I became a stronger couple because of that game. I learned how to love indies because of Meat Boy and BoI... *sigh* and I think its gameplay is aging out for me. What was once an excellent gameplay loop riddled with exciting new ways to play it became bloated and elongated. This translates to boredom. And I can go into how other games do it better now, but thats not question. I guess my question is does tedium without improved skill equate difficulty. And I really can't answer that question because great horror can make tedium into tension, tension into difficulty, difficulty into fun. Which I think BoI has failed to do. So to answer, a high knowledge curve with tedium does not always mean the game is "difficult" or "hard", but it does mean that game can be not fun.

DF. Yes... DF. I lol suck ass at that game. I am so terrible at that game, I get really scared to use water. I can't stand lava, and I am so bad at operational engineering even though I love data science. I think when you get to a level of gaming where you can learn how to play, but the brain don't want to learn it, definitely falls under difficult as a single game. But that community. Oh.... your DF community. If you speak the language of the massive tribe of DF players, they can be some of the friendliest people out there. Something that is seemingly impossible as a single player, becomes a group learned activity. And that is a wonderful thing. So to answer that, I do think a difficult game can still be difficult even though the "community teach" of the game is readily understood and disseminated.

Originally posted by catsgomeow:

For me game difficulty is more about periods of highly concentrated play. Talking about gameplay across all play and winning time

This I agree with. If we aren't talking about roguelikes, when we talk about gameplay, we are talking about the whole kit and kabutal. "It took me 15 hours to beat FF1." As in I learned and then I beat uhhh Garland? in 15 hours. If I it took me 15 hours to beat Valgress in one go, that should be a record. lol. I think if a game can engage me enough to play a game for 15 hours and I still bothered to finish it... and learn how to get faster... lol and faster... and faster lol, I think we are talking about how difficulty is a spice I can't put down. I kinda wonder if a game that is engaging and progresses somewhere is that mix of fun, difficulty, and uh addiction.

[AFFIRMATIVE]

Yeah i think "overwhelming" is the accurate term to describe the feeling, being presented with so many decent games at one go, and i think what might "devalue" them when shown as a collection instead of an individual level, is that once you get stuck or even complete a game, there's not time for marination in appreciating that single title before you're already booting up the next one due to being encouraged to play them one after the other based on the structure of UFO 50, and as PC Gamer described it as a "buffet style", whereas if any of the notable games in there were shown as a single store page, it would've separated them a little for people to mentally be able in properly digesting that one title.

I can't say that this sentiment applies to me, if anything, this "buffet" nature compliments my experience with it. Here's my progress so far during my 21 hours of playing it: https://i.imgur.com/8X4UTWn.jpg

During the 15 titles i've consumed, i found it more enjoyable pinging myself back from games after hitting a roadblock. I might play one of them halfway through, but then i might get a boost from an easier title and for me to go back and cherry a past one, and it's probably going to be the same experience as i delve into further titles into it, but i'll update my sentiment if anything changes. Pilot Quest is a nice outlier to them, for its idle farming structure having a warming familiarity to revisit it again if i might not be in the mood to try new things yet.

So far based on the games i've played, if i found any of the titles as separate steam store pages, i would've went "eh, maybe", but again it might change if i play more. It is however understandable how this feeling might be detracting rather than enhancing for some people. Because this nature feels more enhanced for me, i'd say i'm having a similarly effortless experience with playing one game after the other, as catsgomew is having, though i do go by the chronological order, Pilot Quest excluded.

Now granted, the kicker here is that i'm a roguelite fanatic , for reference here's the games i have 100% all their contents https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198000417230/games/?tab=perfect

i've played around 100 or so roguelites so far, and i've come to learn the pattern recognition of them so well (Be it reducing RNG detriments or learning quick paced real time combat patterns) that many i finish them too quick for my own good relative to the price i pay for their content, so this might be a pretty deciding factor as to why UFO 50 is the perfect title for me (at least so far), if we don't also include the nostalgic appeal, as i've started playing games since the retro console era.

also no one can see your in-game hours, since they're hidden automatically for everyone from public, unless changed in the settings.